83 Freight Container Apartments

If you’re looking for affordable, centrally located, and architecturally interesting rental housing in Nashville, there is a shipping container apartment community that you need to get excited about. Nashville’s 83 Freight Container Apartments provide the industrial style and space-efficient design container home fans love in the form of a huge multi-family community.

With new multi-family shipping container complexes opening all the time, it’s hard to keep up with all the projects. But 83 Freight is in the rare company of container apartments with over 50 rental units. And it’s full of details that really accentuate the shipping containers that form the complex without giving anything up feature-wise to traditional apartment units.

Set about three miles south of downtown Nashville in the Wedgewood-Houston (WeHo) neighborhood, the 83 Freight apartments are a great story of urban development and renewal marketed to a new generation of apartment dwellers. The area is rapidly revitalizing, with industrial properties being converted over to restaurants, retail, and nightlife venues.

The WeHo area is anchored by the construction of a 30,000-seat and $300M+ soccer stadium called Geodis Park less than half a mile away from the apartments. Developer Shawn Bailes assembled three land parcels into the 2.17-acre project site, then got to work with engineers and designers who brought his shipping container apartment vision to life.

The idea was to bring together modern design with smaller unit sizes to appeal to younger consumers who embrace some of the ideas of minimalist living. But they didn’t want to sacrifice quality or beautiful design in the name of cost savings.

By building at scale, they could help drive down the cost compared to smaller container projects, and as of its opening date, 83 Freight is the largest shipping container apartment complex in the United States. But getting there wasn’t necessarily easy.

The developers struggled a bit with getting approval from Nashville code compliance personnel, and initially had some challenges securing financing for the project. Container apartments in general are a fairly novel concept for the United States, especially at this size, and education was required for many stakeholders. Once funding was secured and approval gained, the actual construction process took nearly two years starting in early 2019 and finishing in mid-2021.

The design of 83 Freight is based on 173 one-trip shipping containers stacked into three 3-story buildings. The name 83 Freight comes from the fact that the complex consists of 83 rentable units.

If you’re thinking that some simple math implies that some of the units are probably made from more than one container, you’re right! There are actually five separate floorplans available in this shipping container complex:

1. 320SF studio
2. 640SF one-bedroom
3. 640SF one-bedroom with a private rooftop deck
4. 960SF two-bedroom with two baths
5. 1280SF two-bedroom with two baths

Astute readers will notice that each floorplan’s gross square footage is a whole number multiple of the size of a 40-foot shipping container, 320 square feet. As far as we can tell, other than the small leasing center made from two 20-foot containers, the entire complex is made of 40-foot containers.

While the design of the individual unit floorplans takes advantage of parallel containers set next to each other, the design of the larger complex is not nearly as uniform. Instead, containers intersect at right angles and cantilever out over each other, making the view from the street interesting and captivating. Underpinning the entire structure is a carefully designed pier foundation, with some piers going down 80 feet into bedrock.

Elements of the shipping containers that make up the structure are everywhere. The standard doors of some of the containers are welded open at 90 degrees and integrated into the patios.

And in a somewhat unusual touch, the standard Corten steel is unpainted and was allowed to build up its rusty oxidation coating that protects the metal underneath. This unique patina gives the building color and texture that is certainly uncommon.

We also love the custom catwalks and staircases between units, with metal railings and concrete floors to mesh well with the container aesthetic. But there are plenty of shipping container touches on the interior as well.

Every unit has exposed container ceilings, and if you look closely you might see an exposed container wall in some of the closets. All the units utilize high-cube containers which allow for 9-foot interior ceilings. This helps gives the units a loft-like appearance. And all the units make use of the container’s original wooden floors, topped only with a clear sealer. 

The building wasn’t just designed for appearances though. High-performance and energy efficiency were primary concerns, leading to ample closed-cell insulation, high-performance windows, and high-efficiency HVAC units.

The 83 Freight container apartments are truly a world-class development. From the interior to the exterior, the overall layout to the smaller details, this shipping container building is a historic project and masterful design.

We know that not everyone wants to live in an apartment in the middle of a large city, but regardless of where you live or build your container house, there are great ideas to take away from 83 Freight. 

And it’s not just our opinion that this container apartment is special. At the 42nd annual Aurora Awards at the Southeast Building Conference, 83 Freight won two awards.

Recognition from professional peers helps to provide legitimacy and visibility to container construction. And that helps all of us in the container home community. 

We hope you take your time reading this article and looking through the pictures one by one to see how you can integrate some of these creative design elements into your container project. Let us know in the comments what you think about 83 Freight, especially if you’ve seen it in person!